Presumptive presidential candidate Fred Thompson writes:
“Since the spring of 2003, the economy has had average growth of over 3%, 8.2 million jobs have been created, and the inflation rate has stayed low. The current unemployment rate, 4.6%, is a full percentage point below what it averaged during the 1990s, and there have been 47 consecutive months (almost four years) of job growth. In the last three years, workers’ salaries have risen by $1.2 trillion, or $8,000 per worker, and consumer confidence recently reached its highest level in almost six years.”
Since the mainstream media supports Democrat politicians, good economic news is generally ignored when the credit goes to Bush’s economic policies. Left-wing politicians only have two things they can run on right now:
- “Soak the rich” class warfare. The economy is doing very well, people are keeping more of their own money because of lower federal taxes, and of course, the rich are getting richer. So the left-wing politician promises to punish those who are creating the most wealth in the economy. To wit: even though the government makes more money in taxes on every gallon of gas than the oil companies do, they’ve recently passed even more taxes on oil companies. Despite the fact that only customers pay corporate taxes (duh!), this works well with the populists who like to see the “rich” getting a sticking to. Never mind that most Americans own stock in oil companies in their retirement plans — you don’t have to explain that to people.
- The war in Iraq. Americans don’t like losing wars and would generally rather leave than stay if they perceive a cause to be lost. So the mainstream media is doing its best to under-report recent accomplishments in Iraq in order to help their preferred candidates. But this is beginning to fail.
Still, despite a roaring economy and the fact that we are actually starting to achieve success in Iraq, the whole “get me mine” thing is tough to beat. Even though the Democrat politicians in Washington have bet the farm on US defeat overseas and may end up eating crow, it’s tough to see how this will make any difference when envy-pandering is so powerful (in the form of universal health care, higher taxes “for the rich,” etc.) I hope I’m wrong.
